Organizer

The posts are all out of order. When we got home last week, I made a list of close to 14 blog entries that were missing. That makes me crabby. So, I've made a helpful little table of contents to help you sort it all out and read it in order. Makes me happy, how 'bout you?

* You could just start reading, but the posts are really mixed up

December 19th: The long missing post regarding my short lived hatred of dogs

December 20th: The accident in brief

December 20th: The [very much] expanded version of the aftermath of the accident.

**WARNING: THIS POST CONTAINS PICTURES OF BOTH OUR CAR AND OUR INJURIES. THIS MAY BE UPSETTING/GRAPHIC TO YOUR DAY.**

December 23rd: A Hospital Update An update from the hospital after John's surgery

December 23rd: A Rochester McGarry Christmas Celebrating Christmas with my family the day of John's discharge

December 24th: A Grand Forks Wennersten Christmas

December 25th: A Grand Forks McGarry Christmas

December 26th: A Rochester Heidt Christmas Celebrating Christmas with John's family

December 27th: Things I have Cried About this Week: A hormonal trip through my emotional week

December 27th: Car Shopping What cars we looked at, how I felt about the cars and dealerships, hormonal/emotional breakdowns guaranteed.

December 28th: Holding Cana Christine Holding my best friend's new baby girl!

December 29ths: Happy 7 Year Anniversary! We celebrate our 7th wedding anniversary quietly in Rochester.

December 30th: Our New Van Pictures of our New van

December 31st: More Family Updates

December 31st: Happy New Year! We celebrate New Year's Eve quietly with our Rochester friends.

January 1st: We're Home! We're finally home!

January 2nd: Crafting Revealed I got my craft on this holiday season. See what I made for my family.

January 3rd: Continued Updates A current update about how our family is doing

Lasting Effects, Updates

First, a rant: with everything our family has been through in the last few weeks, I thought by now things would be getting easier. How long would you guess it would take to make an appointment to have 7-10 stitches removed? Answer: four days and over 3 hours on the phone arguing with different doctor's offices.

John: His recovery is going well. He had the staples removed from his head almost a week ago and it is looking much better. He is working very hard at becoming independent again. He is able to do almost everything for himself that is needed with a few small exceptions (driving, putting some types of shirts on, cutting up meat while eating). His physical therapy program (done at home) is going very well and he is working hard at keeping his fingers moving as directed by the physical therapist. We do have an appointment this next week to get the stitches removed from his fingers.

Kelly: Completely boring and uneventful. Neck and upper back are still sore. Baby inside is kicking and active as normal. Has regular boring OB appointment this next week. Bruises and bumps are all gone.

William: Totally spoiled by time at Grandma's house. Bumps and bruises are all healed. Has started asking questions about owies. Daddy owie? Daddy hurt? Mama hurt? Mama okay? Is it as a result from the accident? Hard to say. We haven't had any trouble getting him to ride in his carseat at all although he had kind of an odd freak out at the car wash yesterday. Again hard to say if it would have happened anyways.

The New Van

So, here is the newest [as of yet unnamed] member of the family:

Parked in the driveway at my parent's house
A picture of the odometer: 82 miles! Kind of exciting for us because this is our first new car!


PS Car purchasing details are now all worked out. However, the work is not done because we still have to pay state sales tax and work out the license plate stuff because the dealership was being...well, poopy.

Crafting Revealed

This holiday season, I was feeling especially crafty! Almost every night in December I got my craft on in my new craft area in our basement (pictures of craft area coming soon). Here are just a few of the things that I made for family members (with some help from John in one case).

This is kind of an odd picture, but the gift is actually behind grandma on the fireplace. John and I made my parents a fireplace guard similar to the one at our house. It fits tightly over the fireplace to prevent the bumping of noggins on the stone. I had some leftover material and ended up making 3 matching throw pillows for the couch (not pictured at all for some reason). A little bit amazing is that this gift was so large it was hanging over the top of the backseat on the passenger side during our trip to MN. Although it was right next to me, it didn't touch me at ALL during the rolling action we experience in the car. Which is good because underneath the soft batting is very hard 2x4' s and plywood. A little bit sad is that we had wrapped this in big lawn garbage bags because of the size. During the confusion after the accident, this gift was temporarily misplaced (and I thought thrown away). With a little work, we were able to get it back from some very nice people. However, it was damaged on one side at some point.
I made a baby quilt for Cana! Wooohoooo! I was actually sewing the binding on this quilt when the accident happened. Still not sure how I didn't end up with a needle/pin in my eye, but I didn't!

This is a quilt I actually started in 2002 as a gift for my friend Jessica, who was getting married. The pattern of the quilt is called "Greek Cross", which is where she went on her honeymoon. Time got away from me and I didn't ever get the quilt done. But, I didn't feel right giving her the baby quilt and not her wedding quilt. So, I hurried up and finished this quilt also.

The backside (shows the stitching) of the wedding quilt


In addition, I created 3 different photo calendars for our families which I didn't take pictures of....

Car Shopping

One of the biggest tasks we had to accomplish/decide before we could make the trip home was regarding the car. Just before Christmas, the insurance company called to inform us our car was indeed totaled (umm...DUH!). We had a small amount of rental car insurance we could use.

So, we weighed the options. Use the rental insurance to get home and then buy a new car. Or use the legendary babysitting services available at the grandparent's house and buy a car in Rochester. John and I decided to look at cars in Rochester to see if we could narrow things down a little bit. It was unbelievably helpful to have Grandma and Grandpa around to watch our tornado during this time. Otherwise we have a scenario that looks a lot like this:


One of us asks a question
Car salesperson responds
William runs away
One of us has to follow him
Anywhere between 10 -15 minutes elapse when parent returns with William in tow
William starts wiggling/whining
Parents try to catch each other up. Difficult to hear over the increasingly loud protests of the lap restrained William.
Repeat several times
Leave the dealership with sore muscles, headaches and frustration over not knowing all the answers to the questions asked or if you missed something important during the tantrum.

So, very very helpful to have willing and economical babysitting available to us. While shopping we quickly determined that we needed to look for vehicles in the minivan class (shock! horror! us! A minivan!). Neither one of us is at all interested in owning another SUV at the moment. In the end, I fell madly in love with a Hond@ Ody$ey. I would have made out with this van in the parking lot if it would have made any price difference for us. But it didn't. And, the Toyota Sienna had an almost identical feature list with a price tag close to $5000 less. We negotiated, I cried, and John did research. Apparently a LOT of people are in love with the Sienna (Consumer Reports, Edmunds Review to name a few - I'd link you, but I'm lazy. Maybe you'll get lucky and John will come back in and hook you up).

You all know how the story ends: we drove home in a 2009 Toyota Sienna. And it is lovely. I'm still trying to get over my torrid imaginary afair with the Ody$ey so the Sienna can have a chance. It hasn't swept me off my feet yet - but to be fair, I haven't really given it a chance. The previous love affair aside, several things are holding me back. First of all, this is a brand new car and I didn't really get to pick what color I wanted. We were hugely limited by time and the features we wanted in our van. The features narrowed the search down to ONE vehicle on the lot: silver with a gray (leather!) interior. Not a bad choice, maybe even what I would have picked if I someone had handed me the rainbow and told me to pick. I'm just a little crabby I didn't get to pick. The second issue was the financing. The financing was just short of a nightmare. We started the paperwork on Tuesday afternoon. Close to four hours later, we walked out of the dealership without a car and a tired, hungry, crabby baby (I thought the shopping was the longest part, not the part where you write a check and walk away with keys). The next morning we spent an additional hour at the dealership working on things on top of close to 2 hours of time on the phone with the bank/dealership. Two days after we started the process, we drove home in a van that wasn't completely ours.

We started the financing on 12/30/09 and we didn't actually complete the financing until 1/2/09. I will be fair and throw in the fact that the first was a holiday with both the bank/dealership closed - but still! Totally a stressful experience when I was imagning having to somehow get the vehicle back to Minnesota because things didn't work out.

So! That is the whole story! It is done! It is all good now! And...this a little piece of what William was doing with Grandpa and Grandma while we were out!

Building track races with Grandpa

Eating snowman ice cream with Grandma after dinner (I'm also informed that he cuted himself MANY cookies during this time also. The key? He has learned the all important word: please)
Ice cream, what a treat!
Rocking with Grandpa while reading books or watching a little TV
Trying to walk in Grandma's shoes.

Breathe in that New Baby Smell....

What a treat! I was able to use the good Grandparent baby sitting services and sneak over to my best friend Jessica's house to get my hands on her brand new baby girl: Cana Christine! She was absolutely beautiful with a TON of dark hair! It was great to see I haven't lost any of my baby holding skills, although I did manage to drop Cana's pacifier down the front of my shirt while holding her. I am tempted to blame Cana as the pacifier started out IN her mouth and ended in my shirt. Luckily Jessica and Chris were very forgiving of my ineptness!

Me with my future daughter in law?

More Rochester Christmas (Heidt)

It is a good thing that Christmas is my favorite holiday and favorite time of the year. Because this year we had a whole lot of Christmas! On December 26th, we celebrated with John's family at his brother's house in Rochester. It was wonderful to have everyone together to visit and watch the kids play together. Before we had children, I wouldn't have rated watching kids play with their cousins very high on the list of things I was excited about. However, every time they are together, I have to admit at get a little teary just seeing how cute they are together (most of the time). It is so heart warming and wonderful! Now, my only regret is there aren't MORE cousins out there for us to play with (Hear that aunties and uncles? My mother is going to kill me).

William with his Uncle Mike Heidt. At one point Mike had all three of the youngest cousins balanced on his lap - would have made an adorable picture except I was worried one would topple over if I wasn't right there.

We were in luck that Christmas was at Uncle Mike's house! He has LOTS of cools toys for us to play with (it helps that Mike's kids are only 6 month younger than William). William was obsessed with mowing their carpet. He ran many laps around their house before dinnertime mowing down the carpet.

Jungle Jim: At one point, most of the little kids were climbing up, over and around Uncle Jim and [cousin] Ben! I missed that photo opportunity as I was worried about head bumping or finger stepping occurring without supervision!
After 5 different Christmases, William finally figures out the presents and opening of them. Wow! Puzzles! Thank you cousin Mikey!

Oooohhh....admiring the puzzle!
And a car! And an airplane! Thank you Uncle Joe and Aunt Cathy!

William LOVED this playhouse! (hint hint....birthday coming up...) All the kids enjoyed trying out Alex and Elena's new toy house. William especially liked the doorbell that would ring. Who is it? Someone is here! He would say every time.